While We Wait: Part 3

[Lord_Iggy]

North King, did you see some of their behaviour?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Oh, and,

I do not create NESes just to attract experienced NESers.

However, after some 10-15 updates, I would like to have more than 3 NESers who aren't total noobs. Add 2 more in case of sp1023.

New players who stick around can get to be good and even excellent players. Abaddon is an obvious example, as well as, Nuclear Kid. In my first NES the kid was, to say the least, a bit "nutso" in his orders. 10 months later in the first turn of Forge of Empires, his orders were among the very best. I think that part of a Mod's job is to help new players get better. Better players help all NESes.

 

[LittleBoots]

On the powergaming issue, I think it really is up to mods to counter that behavior. They are obligated to do what they can to stop it from happening, whether its changing the rules or hitting the player with random events. However, I don't see how the player can be blamed for knowing the rules well and using that knowledge to his advantage. Hidden rules are the perfect solution, although it may stymie rule development.

@carmen - ... after 10-15 updates? I don't know if you think you're entitled to something, but its not as if quantity is what is important. Learn from jalapeno_dude. He did a great job modding his first (and I think only so far) NES and, as far as I recall, there weren't too many terribly experienced players, at least in the beginning. You have fun with what you've got. Do names really matter? Plus, with newbies, you do horrible things to them, like make their elite units start a 300 year rebellion creating untold aggravation and fury, and they won't do much more than whimper

EDIT: Actually, I guess there were a decent number of experienced players by the end: alex, andis, iggy, north king. For a lot of us, though, it was our first or one of our first NES and it will always be fondly remembered because he modded newbie-friendly.

EDIT2: Also, I'd like to put forth Perfectionist for one of those Newbie-of-the-Year awards.

 

[das]

However, I don't see how the player can be blamed for knowing the rules well and using that knowledge to his advantage.

It's a matter of self-restraint. A honour system in regards of exploiting the rules, if you will.

 

[carmen510]

That's a pretty snobbish attitude right there; it's like newer players aren't even worth anything to you. Even if you don't actually believe that, it's definitely coming off that way. Not only is that a bad idea in terms of modding (some of your most dedicated players will be newbies), but it's a bad idea in terms of getting new members, since people don't like being blown off.

Actually, I do care about newer players, especially since about 6 of them are classmates.

The problem is, two of them don't have ANY common sense. Seriously, I can count at least 5 times I've told them something that should've been able to be figured out alone.

Also, what exactly do you mean by blown off?

If you mean crippled by almost half by random events, I've done that.

 

[North King]

North King, did you see some of their behaviour?

The mod can tell them to knock it off, destroy their countries, or, if they won't shut up, bring in forum moderators. The behavior isn't restricted to new players, either.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Im guilty in my NES's of allowing too much tech progress and providing too little resistance to reforms and etc. I plan to change that if DNES2 gets off the ground again (I also plan to rename it DaftNES so I stop monopolising the letter 'D' ).

I think that having rival factions and personalities within the same nation could be a good way to counter meta-gaming. So a ruling faction can be powerful, or a nation can be powerful, but rarely both at the same time

@Daftpanzer - The game is beautiful and flying that plane is a lot of fun. Other than including a plot and either a tutorial or some sort of reference (i.e. Civilipedia), I would suggest giving the vehicles the ability to launch the superbombs. Anyway, you said it was mainly a display of what the engine can do, and it is a good engine.

Daft, that game is awesome

Thankyou very much for your comments Littleboots, I appreciate you taking the time to fiddle with the vehicles especially given my total lack of explanation!

 

[Dachs]

Sorry for sort of resurrecting a discussion from much earlier, but I was off destroying my vocal cords for the entire day.

The only international body this forum is recommendable to is the World Court for high probability of future war crimes.

Even though that was at least half-sarcastic, I almost agree with you.

Ultimately the latter. The only way to really get there however, as people on this forum are as a general rule lazy, is the former. I believe the simplest answers are dolling out harsh punishments and generally restricting players solely to the in-game position of head of government when possible (as told to certain other people in an earlier discussion in this thread).

I agree with this wholeheartedly - in fact, that's a prime consideration I had for ending that monstrosity that I was "running" for awhile. I was sort of getting disillusioned with the game for awhile, partially because I thought that it was really ******** from the beginning, and as it progressed I slowly got less and less interested in keeping the thing going. I was mostly unwilling to kill the thing because I didn't feel as though I could let those who were playing down, but since quality and speed problems were already doing that anyway, it wasn't hard for a brief conversation with Symphony to push me over the edge into closing.

exceedingly few players (Stormbringer being the major and perhaps sole exception) are willing to engineer negative events themselves for the purposes of mimicking the actual ebb and flow of a society's fortunes

If that's the real explanation for him wasting 88 double sized divisions when I expressly told him to coordinate with me during NES2 VIb, I will...probably not care after the initial flash of anger. But it is damned annoying.

But you'd have to set it up and impose it on them first. That takes someone who is not afraid of crushing dreams and egos for the common good; moderators who are too nice are also something of a problem in NES, I think, but that's another story.

Yeah, I don't qualify for that moderating position by any stretch whatsoever. But if das plans to do it, since I'm such a fanboy I'll go along with it.

1) "Powergaming," wherein the rules are examined and exploited to their maximum capacity in order return maximum reward. See Abaddon in BirdNES I.

Not a bad thing: This seems to be entirely fair and nothing more than an energetic and intelligent ruler working the system he finds himself in. Doing anything less is either lazy or unintelligent.

...or involves morality. Then again, that could be filed under "unintelligent". Frankly, having been fed the squishy end of the "powergaming" stick more than once, I am loathe to use it on anyone else.

2) "World Dominating," wherein the player attempts to conquer the entire world, or large swathes of it. See Insane_Panda and Symphony D. in NES VI.

Not a bad thing: Hitler. Hirohito. Napolean. Carolus Magnus. Mohammad. Rome. Conquering the world/attempting to conquer the world happens quite reguarly in OTL.

QFSE.

In short, is it necessary (or even possible) to compel a little stupidity in high places sometimes, or will the stupidity remain solely player-generated?

This is an interesting question; as I am definitely not a mod of any quality whatsoever, I can't say, though I'd like inputs on this as opposed to our "language problem".

before surrendering to the Great Devil of Real Life.

Last time I checked he was pretty active, whereas you don't even get on AIM at times that are not extremely early in the morning for me (if that).

And I had forgotton to dig this horse up: Who honestly started the war in DaNes- Wubba, Thlayli, or Dachsmpg?

Thlayli. He paid for what was frankly a half-@$$ed op (getting a Spanish submarine captain with a Marxist history to torpedo an American ship) on the first turn of the entire game, and since he was dumping so much EP into the thing as compared with the actual likely cost, and since I am relatively a pushover, it went ahead. Not one of the smarter decisions I've made, clearly.

This includes people who annex their enemies in all cases. If the conclusion of World War 2 had been a NES with players who do this illogically (I'll admit there are times where annexation is quite logical), the players would have given western Germany to France, Eastern Germany to Russia, or maybe the Low Countries would have ended up annexed by their allies, or set up as 'vassals'.

Yeah, I got you there, though I could should be labeled a hypocrite for my current behavior in AFSNES. I have flimsy excuses, but since they're just that I won't post them.

People insisting on fighting to the death, deliberately annihilating their nations in a war for a slim chance of victory. I know that it has happened in history, but usually only with psychopathic dictators.

I guess that that's one of the only reasons anyone would know about me eh wot? I have to say, though, that at all times during ITNES I never really thought about "survival" - I was more interested in actually destroying Carthage, and I firmly believed that I had a very reasonable chance of winning the war up until we reached the BT miniupdates and I threw in the towel, though I certainly didn't benefit from the whole episode by any stretch. Other instances of fighting to the death involve me leaving and failing to submit orders in the final turn (NES2 VI, ITNES I IT III). [/arsecovering]

Wars should have genuinely brutal negative economic impacts.

Because every single one of them always does for all involved, right?

Annexed countries should not meekly bow down and never raise their heads again, unless the situations are truly terrible (IE: Carthage- Conquered by Rome, Conquered by Vandals, land turns to desert, conquered by Arabs, etc...).

Before the age of nationalism, that makes little sense, especially in areas where the annexees are closely culturally related to the annexers. Also, most of the time people wait to rebel until the annexer is either a) busy elsewhere, b) openly oppressive and leaving the people with nothing to lose, or c) someone else can fill this in, because I'm sure there are a multitude of other reasons that I'm just not awake enough to answer. And I submit that Carthage had no ability to revolt after 146 BC, ignoring anything afterwards, because a Punic people did not exist in northern Africa by the time the Vandals and Alans popped round.

Duh!

You like that word, don't you?

EDIT: LB, Perfectionist ain't a n00b from what I recall, but I'm probably horribly wrong, since I spend less time here than Sheep does these days.

 

[alex994]

EDIT: Actually, I guess there were a decent number of experienced players by the end: alex, andis, iggy, north king.

I wasn't exactly experienced at that time and just went following a textbook on Rome for "inspiration"

It's a matter of self-restraint. A honour system in regards of exploiting the rules, if you will.

A honour system is too easily abused in most cases and presumes everyone shares a similar set of values.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

EDIT: Actually, I guess there were a decent number of experienced players by the end: alex, andis, iggy, north king. For a lot of us, though, it was our first or one of our first NES and it will always be fondly remembered because he modded newbie-friendly.

Actually, I wasn't a newbie any more by that point (by my judgement), however, it was my first great fight with andis. So far, we're kind of tied. My Medes got beaten by his Sumerians in JalNES, after a brutal, long and close-fought war.

If anyone's wondering, the second fight was Parhae vs. Luca, which I ultimately won, thanks to being a meat shield for my more skilled allies (nods to tossi).

Thankyou very much for your comments Littleboots, I appreciate you taking the time to fiddle with the vehicles especially given my total lack of explanation!

Everyone's guilty of making tech advancement too fast. Hence my admission of hypocrisy earlier.

I played with the plane earlier, but I wasn't any good at it. I just flew until I could see most of the battlefield.

Thlayli. He paid for what was frankly a half-@$$ed op (getting a Spanish submarine captain with a Marxist history to torpedo an American ship) on the first turn of the entire game, and since he was dumping so much EP into the thing as compared with the actual likely cost, and since I am relatively a pushover, it went ahead. Not one of the smarter decisions I've made, clearly.

I guess that that's one of the only reasons anyone would know about me eh wot? I have to say, though, that at all times during ITNES I never really thought about "survival" - I was more interested in actually destroying Carthage, and I firmly believed that I had a very reasonable chance of winning the war up until we reached the BT miniupdates and I threw in the towel, though I certainly didn't benefit from the whole episode by any stretch. Other instances of fighting to the death involve me leaving and failing to submit orders in the final turn (NES2 VI, ITNES I IT III). [/arsecovering]

Because every single one of them always does for all involved, right?

Before the age of nationalism, that makes little sense, especially in areas where the annexees are closely culturally related to the annexers. Also, most of the time people wait to rebel until the annexer is either a) busy elsewhere, b) openly oppressive and leaving the people with nothing to lose, or c) someone else can fill this in, because I'm sure there are a multitude of other reasons that I'm just not awake enough to answer. And I submit that Carthage had no ability to revolt after 146 BC, ignoring anything afterwards, because a Punic people did not exist in northern Africa by the time the Vandals and Alans popped round.

Thlayli was totally responsible for that war. When he attacks, he acts justified, when he's attacked, he uses it as justification for total war.

Well, in ITNES, you always had a chance of victory. I was referring to things where the odds were downright near impossible, such as when a great power demands something from a small nation, and the smaller nation would rather inconvenience the power, be destroyed, then take a new nation- as opposed to accepting a minor inconvenience and agreeing + surviving.

Not all wars, but many, especially those against draconian enemies, bring on horrendous damage. Imagine a city being besieged, assaulted, and probably partially looted- but it's still a trade center afterwards, in the hands of the attackers. It should take large amounts of resources to repair things like this, and the damage should be more severe.

Well, of course, when one culture is similar to another, it should be relatively easy. See the unification of the modern nations of Europe, for example. And my point is that the conquered people are, quite often assimilated and disappear completely, when their cultures are attacked by another, radically different one and brutalized under occupation. Although I would say that there is a huge amount of grey area here anyway, so it probably isn't the best point to make.

 

[Symphony D.]

Good to see forces rallying to my banner and doing a lot of the grunt work for me.

See Insane_Panda and Symphony D. in NES VI.

The goal, originally, was to secure the home islands from all possible avenues of attack and achieve the resources, both monetary and natural, to protect them. Once that was achieved, power projection could truly begin. I was only at that stage when the game ended, but I digress.

Do you think there is a way to represent foolish leaders? Or is it unnecessary, given that if the President/King/Premier is stupid/weak, an intelligent advisor will step in? I am curious because I attempted to roleplay a subpar leader ruining the work of his predecessor when I played the Papal States in BirdNES I. I remember das in INES had a disinterested, weak, hedonistic king for Israel, but he also had a strong High Priest that took over the reigns of power.

I think all players do enough stupid things to simulate going between brilliant and idiotic, though some are clearly better at it than others. The trick is measuring their bureaucracy against that. You won't always have a brilliant staff around you to cover for your mistakes. A great contemporary example is Mike Hucakbee. Even if you do, that doesn't mean they'll always be useful; another great contemporary example is George W. Bush.

A given player is prone to do stupid things, like try and invade China as Belgium. The moderator has a wide variety of choices: if the bureaucracy is fully incompetent, he can let it go forward, and be a terrible disaster. If only the civilian bureaucracy is incompetent, the military refuses its orders and attempts a coup d'etat or riots or perhaps sits quietly but refuses to comply. If only the military bureaucracy is incompetent, the civilian government might scrap the proposal before it even gets to them and use it to leverage concessions out of the leader, hold a vote of no-confidence, begin to plot against him or her, and so on. If neither is incompetent maybe some brave soul assassinates the clearly deranged head of government. Or they impeach him. Whatever.

The actual factors depend on the current state of a country, its government, institutions, history, and so on. It's possible that players will engineer bad events for themselves over the long term, when they're being explicitly told they're making history as Birdjaguar suggests; but I continue to be skeptical the bulk will ever do so on their own in the short term where games are measured in years rather than centuries. For that reason, I advocate a dynamic system of government below the player which has its own, possibly entirely different objectives, and will sometimes move to stop, block, and crush the player's own if possible.

In short, is it necessary (or even possible) to compel a little stupidity in high places sometimes, or will the stupidity remain solely player-generated?

I don't think players are stupid. If they see these forces (as described above) at work long enough and don't like the way they turn out they'll probably begin to generate intentional pitfalls themselves so they can progress as they desire while continuing to observe ups-and-downs. The motivation in this game, is metagame based, but the visible results aren't, and as long as those motivations are contained (ie: they're not conspiring with other players to reach a determined objective) then there's no major issue, as the surface appearance will be what affects other players.

Fascinating how some ideas are developed by so many different people independently of each other. I've been working off and on since November on creating rules and other set-up for a potential 1450 alt-history, and have been developing it towards many of the areas that others are expressing thoughts towards, specifically, increased emphasis on internal politics and the use of real numbers in excel for formula purposes, but hidden or displayed as vague categories (bad-average-good).

I noted this myself during the Forge of Empires development cycle. I, personally have been working on various things for awhile that have required me to think about all sorts of things and the solutions to them, so it is rather fun to compare notes when possible. That at the end there is a good encapsulation of what I think is necessary in modern rules as well, by the way.

Please Symphony, the sarcasm does nothing to make me appreciate your points.

Nor is it supposed to, it's there to convey how annoyed I am at the moment. das more or less covered everything else.

It really shouldn't matter either way.

Indeed.

Okay, here's the main and fundamental problem that Symphony did point out clearly enough. "Playing to win" implies criticism of the goal; it has already been shown that there's nothing at all wrong with that goal except that it's impossible (and that is not really bad at all); meanwhile, the only issues you bring up here - and these are the issues that should be brought up - have to do with means towards whatever the goal is.

Thank you.

Why not just exploiting, or metagaming?

I agree, and I think it should be metagaming. Powergaming has different connotations, and I really dislike the iffy, ad hoc definitions NESing sometimes generates to describe concepts that have already been described elsewhere.

Science is the application of the scientific method with the explicit goal of attaining knowledge. Indeed, it has only been part of human society in the past 200-300 years. Any technological advance before that timeframe were combinations of luck, opportunism, and innovation.

The key element of that first sentence is "of the scientific method." People have been trying to attain knowledge long before the scientific method was around, and were often successful in doing so. The benefit of the scientific method is rigorous testing, reproducibility, and methodicism. You can advance quite far long before then, it's just you'll be using trial and error instead. Science is new, but technological development isn't.

On the powergaming issue, I think it really is up to mods to counter that behavior. They are obligated to do what they can to stop it from happening, whether its changing the rules or hitting the player with random events. However, I don't see how the player can be blamed for knowing the rules well and using that knowledge to his advantage. Hidden rules are the perfect solution, although it may stymie rule development.

I would say a better option is to leave the framework (non-statistical effects) and hide simply the machinery (statistical effects). This is a fancy sort of way of resaying what The Strategos already did--rather than giving the player any raw numbers, when possible (unless they're genuinely better, like say, Population) it's better to give them an "indicator" that's tied to numerical concepts.

I do agree though that it's the responsibility of the mod. Players are like cats, of course they want to wander where they will; the mod has to herd them. This is all an exercise in trying better to do that.

I was mostly unwilling to kill the thing because I didn't feel as though I could let those who were playing down, but since quality and speed problems were already doing that anyway, it wasn't hard for a brief conversation with Symphony to push me over the edge into closing.

That's right, people, I inadvertently killed DaNES! Who wants to take a swing at me?

If that's the real explanation for him wasting 88 double sized divisions when I expressly told him to coordinate with me during NES2 VIb, I will...probably not care after the initial flash of anger. But it is damned annoying.

I meant more his reaction of when the war was lost, when he set up two or three entirely different factions in Russia and had each of them try and create a solution with the Allies. The way he ultimately selected which won (the Egalists, if I remember their in-game name right) was a bit metagamey (it was predicated on my pulling out of the Russian Far East, basically, as he had apparently shifted the bulk of his population beyond the Urals somehow) but that is in line with what I suggest earlier in this post and the concept was good.

He was retaining control of his country yet at the same time changing it in tune to the events in a way which was historically realistic.

Also, each division wasn't individually twice as large, he just got twice as many of them.

You like that word, don't you?

Says the man who uses the word "yo" inappropriately at almost every opportunity?

Thlayli was totally responsible for that war. When he attacks, he acts justified, when he's attacked, he uses it as justification for total war.

QFT. You forgot the heaps of indignation and poorly constructed moral supremacy, though.

 

[~Darkening~]

Thlayli. He paid for what was frankly a half-@$$ed op (getting a Spanish submarine captain with a Marxist history to torpedo an American ship) on the first turn of the entire game, and since he was dumping so much EP into the thing as compared with the actual likely cost, and since I am relatively a pushover, it went ahead. Not one of the smarter decisions I've made, clearly.

[SIZE=+2]I WAS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!IKNEWIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/size]

....Ahh, I mean I just proved you wrong Symph about my deduction skills . [egogrowsoncemore]

 

[Symphony D.]

Do you want a gold star or something?

 

[Demetrias]

of course he does he is an NESer after all.

 

[~Darkening~]

Do you want a gold star or something?

Hell yes.

In all truths, that was just aimed at youre snipe about my deduction skills. (Manonash thread).

 

[Symphony D.]

Unfortunately, I am not the local celestial deity, as my signature would indicate.

 

[Demetrias]

No your just the evil computer experimenting on our feeble human brains.

 

[~Darkening~]

Unfortunately, I am not the local celestial deity, as my signature would indicate.

Damn. You just have to ruin my dreams, don't you?

On a different note, I'd like to ask everyone something. For sometime now (I think around a year), I've been having trouble writing anything. I'll start, form an idea, and write out a paragraph or two. Then I'll get frustrated seeing that the story itself is nothing more than a ripoff of a different story, and delete the whole file. I guess what I'm saying is how do most of you guys remian creative? Do you not just care about the idea of the story or are you just that creative? Or am I just a whiny freak who doesn't know how to commit to work ?

 

[Demetrias]

I have to really care about what I am writing and I also rip off stuff I have read before in history books or other things.

 

[~Darkening~]

Well, maybe it is just me. I tend to try to shove as much detail down the story's throat. For example, the intro into my latest attempt for a birdnes story:

Spoiler :

"The sun hung low against the evening sky, the dying fire of the giant orb fighting against the impending dominance of her rivals. The low squawking of the seabirds rung out against the silent lapping out the sea tides, bringing an odd sense of serenity to the general chaos of the port. The city was built around the natural curve of a small cape, buildings rising gracefully along the gentle slopes and docks crowding against the massing, frothing ocean. Along the far extremes of the city two jagged cliffs formed natural boundaries, and granted the city a shelter from savage winds. Stacked in two vertical pillars twice the height of an average man, a large column of mosaic stones towered over the cliffs and surrendered the city its name: Riháre- Stone Harbor."

Really, I should just sum it all up in forty words instead of 130. Is it only me?